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Archive for July, 2012

“Word of mouth is golden in small communities. Make as many contacts as possible. This makes networking easier and more successful.”

Rachel F. Fenske
Librarian, University of the Virgin Islands
St. Croix, USVI

What is your position?
I am a part-time reference and instruction librarian at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix campus.

Is there something in your own personal story that led you to do the work you do?
Prior to attending the University of Alabama’s graduate program in Library Services, I was a pre-med major. I have always enjoyed medical research and have taught many classes in the use of PubMed throughout my professional librarian career. I have been the liaison to biology and chemistry departments at two universities, and enjoy teaching undergraduates and graduates in the use of specialized databases in the field of medicine, nursing and allied health fields. Having the opportunity to work on an NN/LM SE/A award enabled me to expand my PubMed instruction to health educators and practitioners in the community where access to quality medical information is so imperative.

What do you love most about your outreach work?
I have reaped the rewards of helping people navigate the maze of information available from the National Library of Medicine, and helped them incorporate this information into their knowledge base. All of my class participants are surprised that the information from NLM is free and so easily available. They have all been very eager to learn, and have recommended the use of the resources to their colleagues and coworkers. Without these trainings, this could not have been achieved. I enjoy teaching patrons new resources and have been glad to see so many community users exposed to new resources that would benefit them in their work environment as well as their own lifelong learning. The most rewarding part of my work, however, is when I receive comments after a session such as the following, “This is one of the most valuable trainings I’ve attended ever. Wished we had this training sooner!” That’s what I love about my outreach work!

What is the biggest challenge in what you do?
The biggest challenge I face is encouraging colleagues to actively engage in reference and instruction services. In developing the vision for the library, it is imperative that the connection between a librarian and student exists, and that students know who they can go to for their information needs. Without this connection, students become lost in the maze of information and mentoring students to become lifelong learners of information is diminished. With the vast amount of information available, information literacy is the key to their success.

What has been the most fulfilling part of your work in terms of health outreach to your community’s underserved populations?
St. Croix is a small island in theCaribbeanwith limited access to libraries and information resources. My outreach extends to HIV/AIDS agencies, the Virgin Islands Department of Health, and various social services on the island that benefit greatly from the training and resources I provide. Providing awareness to the free, scholarly, and reputable medical resources available through the National Library of Medicine has opened the doors to so many. The easy to read and practical resources available through Medline Plus are most appropriate to the many users I teach. It has been extremely rewarding to see so many health professional learn about these resources so they, in turn, can relay the information on to their coworkers, patients and families.

What do you see as the biggest health concerns in the communities you serve?
The biggest health concern on the island of St. Croix is HIV/AIDS, with diabetes and heart disease following close behind. Educating the community about these diseases and providing information on how to reduce the risks of contracting HIV/AIDS, ways to manage diabetes and promote healthy living is a major hurdle within the health professional community. Providing access to accurate, reliable and current health information to this community is crucial to the educational role that health professionals face. Access to Medline Plus is a great resource for health professionals to use when interacting with their clients and was well received by community users.

How did you first come to know NN/LM SE/A?
I learned about NN/LM SE/A from my colleague, Judith Rogers, Manager of the University of the Virgin Islands Libraries. She had received previous awards to assist in health literacy instruction among the Juan Luis Medical Hospital staff and recommended that I review funding opportunities to continue this work along with nurturing the University of the Virgin Islands nursing program, and other health agencies within the community.

In what ways has NN/LM SE/A been of help to you?
In 2010-11, I received an award to provide instruction to health care professionals, professional medical staff and community users in the use of PubMed and Medline Plus. This opportunity enabled me not only to educate users in the use of reliable medical information, but also to foster an understanding of professional librarianship among community users. Furthermore, I was able to facilitate a working partnership with the University of the Virgin Islands and the community in advocating health literacy.

Can you share a success story about the impact of health outreach in your community?
After conducting a workshop in the use of Medline Plus for a group of residents at a community housing facility, I was contacted by the complex manager the following year to conduct a similar workshop to her residents. She has since sent her employees to attend additional NN/LM workshops that were offered on St. Croix and is now enrolled at the university. With this one contact, I have continued to provide opportunities for health education to community users long after my award was complete. The professional connection between the university and community users in health education literacy has been quite significant and successful.

What advice would you give others who are interested in doing health outreach work in their communities?
a) Be persistent in communications, as many times the initial contact information is incorrect.
b) Word of mouth is golden in small communities. Make as many contacts as possible. This makes networking easier and more successful.
c) Know the culture of your community and adapt.
d) Provide instruction examples pertinent to your community/clientele. This will engage your audience and demonstrate that you are genuinely interested in their health concerns.
e) Be prepared for network failures and have alternative plans. Be ready to be a technology expert even if you are not!

In June, I attended the third annual HDI Forum, aka – The Health Datapalooza, in Washington DC. Most of my time was spent with NLM experts Loren Frant, Stephanie Dennis, and Serena Burgess in the exhibit booth promoting MedlinePlus Connect, MedlinePlus web service, and MedlinePlus XML files. Working at the booth allowed the NLM’ers extra time to make important connections with consumer health content providers as well as last minute preparation for the panel session on NLM Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

The HDI is a recently formed health industry public/private consortium whose intended goal is to find new solutions that retrieve data from government, payor and healthcare provider sources. According to its website, the consortium “encourages the creation of a health data ecosystem that promotes and accelerates the innovative use of health data”. You may have heard synonymous terms such as mining “big data”, “latent data” or even “lazy data,” all of which refer to the ability to tap into enormous resources of de-identified information. Retrieving these data allow innovators to further population and patient research; a huge effort jumpstarted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) when it launched HDI a few years ago.

What is the Health Datapalooza? The technology conference encourages innovative applications, mostly from entrepreneurs and start-ups, to meet the critical needs of patient care providers and health researchers. Hosted by HHS, it was previously held on NIH’s main campus, but with dramatically increased attendance this year’s event was held at the Washington DC Convention Center. It brings together the brightest risk-takers in engineering, computer science, medicine, and nursing with healthcare providers, administrators, leading edge venture capitalists, think-tank agencies, and foundations. Many of the novel apps, not all with commercial intent, work in concert with a healthcare institution’s IT infrastructure, most notably an electronic health record system (EHR-S). Additionally, several organizations provided IT competitions, that when judged by review panels, offer substantial awards to the winning teams. In addition to the overall competition hosted by HDI, other participating organizations rolling out a gauntlet of challenges included the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Healthcare Foundation, and the New York eHealth Collaborative.

On day two, there was a stellar cast of speakers including the nation’s chief technology officer – Todd Park, HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, and Dr. Bill Frist – physician and former U.S. Senate Majority (TN) Leader. The theme of Secretary Sebelius’ talk was the recognition of an innovation gap in healthcare. She acknowledged the tremendous advances in medical treatments and interventions, but felt that many underlying processes and systems are still 40 years old, which inhibit efficiencies. The Secretary stated that currently, there are 60 major health systems that have applied to form accountable care organizations with more in the pipeline, the rate of healthcare venture capital is up 60% since 2009, and itriage, a mobile app created by a Colorado ER physician with a focus on consumer health empowerment, was recently purchased by Aetna, a payor.

Dr. Bill Frist spoke of rapid advancements in personalized medicine at the molecular level and some of the resulting challenges. He conveyed the recent discovery of the ability to harness non-beating heart adult stem cells and making them mimic beating heart cells. This technique could possibly replace damaged heart muscle, thus alleviating the need for heart transplantation in some patients. In closing, he recommended a book by David Agnus, MD entitled The End of Illness.

Interspersed between the speakers, were healthcare apps demonstrations. Three of the highlighted apps were:

Indigo – Creates individualized patient guidelines based on the degree of risk a patient displays for adverse events.

MEDgle.com/API – The API allows development of health applications leveraging the power of MEDgle expert system and search

Stratasan – Access to clean and immediate intelligence and analytics from the vast amount of healthcare data.

What does this mean for SE/A network members? Quoting Secretary Sebelius, “if new incentives are the engine for innovation and new technologies like electronic health records are the vehicle, then data is the fuel.” Gatherings like Health Datapalooza reinforce the reality that electronic health record systems will be repositories for patient data, and that over time, apps, utilities, APIs and other IT structures will strengthen their connections within electronic health record systems. Inasmuch as you are able, become familiar with these IT structures and the manner in which they are deployed within your clinical community because they will undoubtedly yield new sources of information and new directions in healthcare.

Judy Burnham has been with the University of South Alabama since 1989, where she was named Director in 2007. She has worked in reference, instructional services, technical services and outreach, and is liaison to the College of Allied Health Professionals. Judy was a NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellow from 2004-2005 and was recipient in 2001 of the Southern Chapter/Medical Library Association Academic Librarian of the Year Award. In 2002, she was the MLA Estelle Brodman Academic Medical Librarian of the Year. Her research interest is in bibliometrics. In addition to the project with health ministry leaders, Judy has participated for several years in instructional sessions on library literacy skills for minority high school students interested in health care careers. However, one of her favorite roles is grandmother to four outstanding grandchildren.

Presentation:Empowering Health Ministry Leaders

This presentation will focus on the SE/A NNLM funded project that provided health ministry leaders in ten African American churches with the technology, equipment and information needed to help them better serve the health information needs of their congregations.

Judy Burnham has been with the University of South Alabama since 1989, where she was named Director in 2007. She has worked in reference, instructional services, technical services and outreach, and is liaison to the College of Allied Health Professionals. Judy was a NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellow from 2004-2005 and was recipient in 2001 of the Southern Chapter/Medical Library Association Academic Librarian of the Year Award. In 2002, she was the MLA Estelle Brodman Academic Medical Librarian of the Year. Her research interest is in bibliometrics. In addition to the project with health ministry leaders, Judy has participated for several years in instructional sessions on library literacy skills for minority high school students interested in health care careers. However, one of her favorite roles is grandmother to four outstanding grandchildren.

Presentation:Empowering Health Ministry Leaders

This presentation will focus on the SE/A NNLM funded project that provided health ministry leaders in ten African American churches with the technology, equipment and information needed to help them better serve the health information needs of their congregations.

Kate Majewski works in the Bibliographic Services Division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), developing training for PubMed and other NLM products. She is originally from Buffalo, New York. Kate has worked in libraries since 1989, first in State University of New York academic libraries (Buffalo and Delhi) then at NLM, focused primarily on Web development and instruction. At Delhi she received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship for her part in developing curriculum-integrated information literacy education for the Veterinary Science and Nursing programs.

Presentation: MEDLINE/PubMed: A Grab Bag of Tips and Tricks for Experienced Searchers:

This presentation offers a selection of lesser-known information about the MEDLINE record and PubMed indexing, and techniques to get the most out of PubMed and its related databases. Bring your questions!

The recording of this presentation can be found at: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/p11275593/ – There are some problems with the recording after 16 minutes, but the remainder of the webinar is captioned.